Do You Trust Me?

The most fundamental dynamic that exists in a clinic, between a nurse and her patient, is trust. That is it. That is the one aspect of an extraordinarily complex relationship that can take years to earn, and seconds to lose, forever.

I am continually amazed that complete strangers make their way to my little clinic and put their life in my hands. Who is crazier? The patient who lies there hoping the nurse is quite sane, or the nurse who is hoping that the patient isn't decidedly dangerous?

The following is a snippet from a new patient.

I will write separately about my wonderful and profound experience yesterday and to make the next booking; I woke today with a great sense of calm with decades of thoughts now peacefully set to rest, and I owe you a lot.

I'm going to email a reply to him of course but thought it worth expanding via a blog, as I feel that trust is something I may want to discuss regularly as a topic.

It is worth mentioning at this point that (apologies; I have rambled from here to several inches further down) when I ever do trust someone enough to tell them what I do for a living, they always, without fail, ask how do I know that the patient will not harm me or sexually assault me.

Are they crazy? Haven't they ever worked in an office or a shop or a bar or a hotel?

• I have worked in hotels and been accosted by the owners in the laundry room, store room, kitchens, bedrooms and even in reception whilst on the phone to a guest. Try being polite and take a booking whilst simultaneously elbowing your boss in the gonads.

• I have worked in supermarkets where butchers and bakers (no, no candlestick makers) would always be brushing past me, backwards and forwards as I was bending over whilst messing around with shelf edge labels.

• I have worked in big stores where managers have continually made that many passes I felt as though I was playing rugby rather than trying to just do my job. Oh and don't they let you know it when you rebuff their oily attempts at seduction or refuse to laugh at their Roy Chubby Brown sexist attempts at something vaguely resembling humour.

At work I have been bullied, teased, propositioned, patronised, and more importantly underpaid and underestimated. I fondly recall a lot of them when I am turning up the dials on my electric box. No, just jokin'.

I learned to be a quick thinking smart arse who was well briefed on ACAS and UNISON. It turns out managers don't like being corrected. My poker face enjoyed seeing their errors being handled by HR. Oh and I figured out during many an unfair diciplinary procedure that I could stare at a manager as though he was a sex god, and then as if he were the middle aged, bloated, red faced buffoon he was and then back again and see his TOTAL confusion. That, dear readers, is when I discovered the power of my eyes and the weakness of males.

It goes without saying that an awful lot of behaviour suffered in the workplace was because I am female. One particular time I remember fondly because I was so in their face and they couldn't do a damn thing about it. I worked for a supermarket, in the offices. I can't remember the job title but it involved ensuring that the entire store was legal in terms of pricing. I had to scan every singe item in store and ensure that the price it scanned at matched the shelf edge label, or any other pricing materials.

If I found any discrepancies I had to immediately correct the system so that the barcode scanned accurately. I was forever getting calls from checkout as well for items not scanning, so I had to search for the price and put that barcode into the system. This was an important job. If Trading Standards did a swoop or a customer complained and TS found out and investigated a supermarket, back in the early 90s, would be fined £2000 per item on the shelf. That could be quite a big fine.

This one particular day I got a call from the manager. I went through and found him as expected at his desk, and the produce manager sat having a chit chat. The manager asked me to make them a cup of coffee.

I was dumbfounded. My tits were equally dumbfounded. Two grown men, sat on their fat arses, unable to make themselves a cup of coffee, expected me, the tit carrier to make their drinkies for them. Me and my tits were doing Very Important Work in the EPOS office and I had a lot to do. No way was I going to make coffee for them just because I had breasts and wore a skirt. My job was specialised and highly skilled. Nobody else instore could do my job including those overpaid, underactive useless articles. I had work to be completed before the end of my shift. My work was time sensitive. Theirs was not.

"Oh, sorry Mr SexistPig, I don't know how to make coffee. I don't drink it, so I, like, literally have no idea, it woud be just awful I'm sure, sorryyyyyyyy". I then went back to my Very Important Work Actually quite pleased with my feminist self.

Ha! Where was I? Oh yes.

Am I worried about clients harassing me? Good god no. My job is far safer than what's out there. My work colleages are better (as in non-existent), I have absolute respect from my clients (any whiff of disrespect and they are Out The Door), and the pay is better. My work is one of the few careers where the gender pay gap works in my favour.

Where was I? TRUST!

So once I have established that my new patient doesn't have an axe stashed somewhere about his personage, and he's now fully denuded and securely restrained I can start to scare him to death by whipping out my cattle prod. No jokin' again, I lost that years ago. That's another story.

Patients come to me with varying levels of trust.

• Some have seen all my films and feel as though they know me and are very relaxed.

• Some have seen all my films and want to be relaxed but are actually quite apprehensive.

• Some are excited but scared.

• Some are quite calm on the surface but I know from their responses that they are papping themselves.

I always take things quite slow with a new patient. It is vitally important that patients see that I'm not at all ego driven. I have nothing to prove. I don't need to do any daft things to scare them to prove that I am Mistressy enough. I do sometimes pounce on them when they come through my door but they are never scared (I don't think, I've never asked them). Turned on big time, judging by their grins, but never worried that I am going to betray their trust.

Trust is (are?) the foundations of the relationship between nurse/Mistress and her patient/sub.

I have heard so so many stories from patients who have had to reluctantly leave their Mistress due to the lady betraying their trust. There is nothing domly about breaching pre-agreed boundaries for self satisfaction. When I was newly minted Mistress I used to discuss gently pushing against boundaries because subs would enjoy some form of progression. But oh so many, far too many anecdotes involving clearly egotistical self serving 'satisfaction' which invariably results in a smaller client base. Certainly if not smaller then extremely transient, and therfore quite superficial.

This new patient thinks he has reached a level of trust with me and therefore has experienced everything my clinic can offer. I'm delighted to tell him that trust has many many layers. The longer you attend my clinic the more layers are discovered and the deeper our mutual understanding grows and flourishes.

It can take years, for trust to grow. I would say trust never stops growing. There is no end to trust. You cannot fully trust someone in some senses. You may think you do but then you find yourself trusting them some more.

I am currently working with a much loved patient who despite attending my clinic for ooooooo 5 or 6 years has only just had an enormous epiphany and is probably more excited now after many sessions with many more mistresses than he has ever been. This experienced he-could-write-a-book-about-it connoisseur of kink is like a giddy new-to-it-all client again.

So, in conclusion;

1. Give yourself time to develop as a patient. There is much more to you than you know and in time, I always find you.

2. I will never be a complete tit and betray your trust by playing the big I am.

3. If I have to tell you how domly I am, I'm clearly not. If I have to breach your boundaries to feel good about myself I am clearly in the wrong job.

That's it, the end of this week's ramble and reminising.

Keep hydrated, stay in the shade, leave the mango sorbet on the shelves for me please, and make sure you slap some sunblock on.